News from our farmstead #27

Tests of patience

When you get pregnant you suddenly enter into a world of exciting milestones: the first scan, the first heartbeat, the end of the first trimester, the bump appearing, the 20 week scan, “viability week”, reaching full term, etc. etc, not to mention all the different fruit milestones if that’s your preferred way of counting (grape week, pomegranate week, etc). As I’ve discovered, this doesn’t stop once the baby’s born. This August we passed so many milestones that I’ve lost track of how we’re supposed to be measuring things: Santi turned 1 month old (or -1 month old?), reached 34 weeks gestational age (the week we were all hoping the pregnancy would make it to), he reached and surpassed his goal weight of 2.2kg, then surpassed 3kg, became a watermelon, spent 1 month in the NICU, moved out of a heated incubator and began wearing clothes for the first time (very cute), and then moved back into the incubator because his crib was right below the air conditioning vent and he was getting cold. But there was really only one thing we were waiting for - to find out when he could come home.

Unfortunately we still don’t have a clear date. I’d love to say it’ll be less than 2 weeks now, but I’ve thought that before and been proven wrong. We keep getting so close to being ready, and then something keeps setting us back. Every day we never know quite what to expect when we enter the NICU and there have been days when I’ve been genuinely scared to ring the buzzer and be let in. When someone says “5 minutes, papis” instead of buzzing you straight through, you know someone’s about to come out and intercept you to deliver bad news before you walk in on it. Last week, Santi had surgery to diagnose and temporarily treat an inherited condition which we’d been suspecting he might have for a while, and in theory this should be the last hurdle before he’s healthy enough to leave the hospital, but recovery from the surgery has been a bit bumpy.

So here we are, the pattern of our days remains the same. All we can do is take one day at a time and remind ourselves that although these weeks feel interminable now, they’ll feel like the blink of an eye once they’re over, just as my weeks in hospital do now. After so many months of resting, waiting and hoping, patience is starting to feel like a skill I’m finally mastering. The key is not to think about tomorrow or next week, let alone the end goal - just focus on today, on what we’re going to do, the best things we can do for Santi today, how we will look after ourselves and the animals, what we will do on the house, whether there’s anything to preserve from the garden, etc.

Yes, work on the house continues. What we’re working on is constantly getting re-prioritised as we figure out what we’re capable of and how long things take, and we re-adjust to ensure the most important stuff will be finished before Santi comes home. Until the other week, we had help from the most wonderful volunteer who came to stay with us and help us out. She arrived the day after my Mum left, so actually we had help on the farm continuously from June through to late August which was an absolute god-send. With her help, we made amazing progress on some of our renovation goals but now we’re on our own for the first time in months and we’re constantly learning about and revising what we’re capable of alone. Really we’re just one person because in the short windows of time we’re at home and we’re not sleeping, it takes one person just to sort out all the general chores and make sure we have some healthy food prepared to eat (including Santi, by expressing milk round the clock!) whilst the other (Mauro) is free to work. Occasionally I have some free time to lend a hand, or do an odd DIY job from my list, but most days it just doesn’t work out like that.

Originally we wanted to get the kitchen totally finished (tiled, new stove in place, final masonry done, painted, decorated and all), the open stove fixed into the living room and bedroom, and both rooms tiled. Working on this stuff is certainly another test of patience. With many of these jobs we actually know what we’re doing and aren’t learning the skill, so we can clearly see how to advance, it’s just a question of time - which we lack. Every tile laid feels like a little miracle, every tomato and courgette picked and made into something healthy before it becomes a marrow/chicken food is a great achievement. Every tiniest action involves deciding whether it’s worth time that could be spent at the hospital, which is what everything else takes away from, at the end of the day: taking a shower sometimes makes the cut, sowing autumn seeds sadly does not.

Looking like I helped with the kitchen tiling: actually, I didn’t

So our current revised goal, knowing that we can’t do everything, is to have “Santi-Corner” ready. Instead of focussing on three rooms, we’re focussing on one: the bedroom. And instead of having that room totally finished, we’ll aim for one corner of it to be perfect: the area where we’ll have Santi’s changing station, furniture, a nursing chair and other little baby things. If we can just get that little corner perfectly done, I feel like we’ll have a little oasis of calm and beauty in the middle of a still quite chaotic house.

The tomatoes and peppers became canned pizza sauce and spicy ketchup

As we approach harvest season, I wonder what “big” harvests we’ll manage. For the first time in two years we’re having a good year for olives, almonds, grapes and carobs. Well, good by our standards. The last 2 years the almonds and olives did nothing, so any yield is exciting in our eyes. With the price of olive oil going through the roof we’d really love to get some of our olives pressed this year, and harvest time isn’t for a few months so there’s still time to hope everything settles down by then. The almonds are starting to open and fall off the trees a couple of months early this year due to the hot, dry summer so we’ll need to decide whether to try and collect any pretty soon. And the carob pods all fell down a few days ago in a gale, which is actually helpful, because when they’re on the floor they’re easy to collect and they last a long time so there’s no rush to pick them up. I can easily fill a couple of tote bags each time I go out on a dog walk and soon we end up with a big stash which are treats for our donkey and goats over the next year.

cant’t. stop. eating. grapes.

Then there’s the grapes which are also ready early this year, although I’m not measuring the sugar content so I’m not sure how much readier, how much earlier. Since winemaking is too much of a hassle to contemplate (although I really would like a huge amount of wine, frankly), I’d like to preserve some bottles of grape juice and make some jam. I think this is a sensible goal - juice making is pretty quick, and jam is also pretty easy. Last year I made a batch of grape and plum jam and since I was lazy, I didn’t take the seeds out of the grapes. And I’m happy to announce that you can’t even tell in the finished product. So there’s a tip, in case you fancied being lazy too.

Meanwhile, another glut we’ve had lately has been plums and tomatoes, which I’ve preserved mostly by freezing in our amazing new fridge-freezer, either in the form of a basic tomato sauce or simply sliced and bagged in freezer bags. This fridge-freezer is an absolute game-changer and I was actually considering writing this whole newsletter about it (you’d be surprised how much I have to say) but I figured that that’s maybe not the update you were all expecting! But if we ever have a quiet month, it’s a topic I can pull out of my sleeve.

Anyway, that’s it for this month. There’s probably lots I’ve missed or forgotten - the abscess surgery I had, for example! (a story for another day) - it’s been a long, exhausting month and for the first time since this newsletter started, I didn’t get this issue out on time, which says something! Thanks as always for reading and see you later in September 😊

Harriet 🌻